Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead

by The Singing Of The Dead(lit)

  looks like a twenty-two caliber pistol."

  "Another twenty-two," Jim said. "What a coincidence."

  "This one also firing at close range, another amazing coincidence. The

  bullet went into her chest, and there's no exit wound, so ballistics

  should tell us something if we ever find the weapon." His glum voice

  told them how likely an event he thought that. Kate thought of the river

  running past the Airstream and felt a little glum herself.

  "Tears on her hands," Jim said. "You're thinking this one maybe wasn't

  meant to be murder?"

  Without answering, Kenny brought out two clear plastic

  139

  bags. In one, there was a box of Expert brand typing/copy paper, letter

  size, not quite full. In the other, there were two Sharpie Fine Point

  Permanent Markers, one still half in the shrink wrap it had been sold

  in. "It's the same paper as the other letters, all right, same

  watermark, twenty-five percent cotton bond, eight and a half by eleven."

  "Did the letter Anne got last night come from the paper in that box?"

  Kate said.

  "I haven't seen it yet, by the way," Jim said.

  Kenny tossed him the letter, encased in a clear plastic document

  protector. Jim read it. His eyebrows went up. "Hello. This one reads

  like blackmail."

  Kate looked at Kenny. "So? Same paper?"

  He shrugged. "I counted the pages left. There are four hundred and

  ninety-two. Eight letters sent. Eight pages missing."

  "Envelopes?"

  Kenny produced a third bag, filled with white envelopes. "No window,

  lined on the inside for security, gummed flap, you can buy them a

  hundred at a time. I've only seen copies of the previous letters." He

  tossed the bag to Jim.

  Jim caught it. "Hell, I don't know, envelopes look pretty much the same

  to me. Doesn't look any different than the ones the other letters came

  in. Kate?"

  She took the bag from him. "Yeah. Look the same. How about the handwriting?"

  "Block printing. Pen strokes seem a little longer on the previous

  letters, but that may be the copy effect. I'll send the new one off to

  the lab today. Were there fingerprints on any of the others?"

  Jim shook his head.

  "Hell."

  Jim grinned. "If it was easy, everybody'd be doing it."

  "I had dinner with her last night," Kate said.

  Both men looked at her. She fixed her eyes on Kenny.

  140

  "At the hotel. It was crowded; she had a seat at her table she didn't

  mind sharing."

  "Why didn't you tell me this before?" Kenny said. He was every inch the

  cop now, unbullshitable eyes trained on Kate's face.

  "Things started happening kind of fast after we found the body. I

  figured it would keep. I didn't know it was her," she said, before Kenny

  could say anything. "I mean, I didn't know I was having dinner with the

  researcher Darlene hired."

  "You didn't talk?"

  "Oh no, we talked. We talked until after ten." She saw the look the two

  men exchanged, and sighed. "She told me she was a writer. She told me

  about the book she was writing, some tale about a dance-hall queen

  during the gold rush and her daughter and granddaughter. Or that's what

  it was turning into. She'd been doing a lot of research, she said, but

  she never mentioned the campaign. Although Darlene did say later that

  Paula had just gotten off a plane from Fairbanks, where she'd been doing

  some research at the library. We only exchanged first names."

  "Yeah, right," Jim said, with a quick, dismissive laugh. "Two women sit

  down at a table, five minutes later they know each other's favorite

  floors at Nordie's, their book club's most recent book selection, and

  how dumb their men are."

  "No," Kate retorted, "that's only what we want you to think, Jim.

  Actually we're trading notes on how bad you are in the sack."

  "If we could get back to the case?" Kenny said.

  "Certainly," Kate said.

  Jim jerked his head. The gesture caught Kate's eye and when she glanced

  over involuntarily she saw that his skin had reddened beneath its tan.

  The traitor Mutt, sitting between them, bumped his hand and he scratched

  behind her ears.

  141

  "Did you walk back to the trailer with her?"

  Kate shook her head. "She said she wanted to stay on a while and watch

  what happened at the bar. Said she was going to have some bar scenes in

  her book and since she doesn't-didn't drink, she needed to put in some

  research."

  "Any guys around?"

  "Yeah. Couple of them asked us to dance, but we turned em down."

  Kenny glared at Jim before he could say anything.

  "Anybody making a pest of himself?"

  "No. Pretty mellow crowd. I saw Tom Gordaoff in there just before I

  left, putting the moves on a girl."

  "Recognize her?"

  "No."

  "Would you know her again?"

  "Kenny."

  He waved a hand. "All right, all right, dumb question."

  "Where are Pawlowski's personal effects?" Jim said.

  "Jeannie's sitting on them outside." They followed him into the outer

  office.

  Paula Pawlowski's possessions, or what they had found in her trailer,

  were pitifully few and carefully spaced out across a work table. There

  was a laptop computer, a black three-ring binder, half a dozen

  notebooks, and a Ziploc bag full of pens and pencils. There was a cheap

  carry-on stuffed with one change of clothes, worn, and a ditty bag,

  probably the bag she'd taken to Fairbanks with her. Kate pulled on the

  surgical gloves Kenny gave her and opened it up. "Shampoo, conditioner,

  toothbrush, toothpaste. No perfume, no eyeliner, no mascara."

  "Like you would know a mascara wand if you saw one," Jim said.

  She gave him her most dazzling smile, at the sight of which Mutt's ears

  went straight up. "Like you would have any idea what I would know or not

  know."

  "Yeah, okay," Kenny said. "Jesus, you two, you just get

  142

  worse and worse. Anybody'd think you were shacking up."

  There was a split second of silence. "No jewelry," Kate said. "Was she

  wearing a watch when we found her?"

  "No."

  "She wasn't wearing one at dinner, either."

  Kate looked at the laptop. "Can we turn on the computer?"

  "Why not?"

  Kate pulled over a chair and opened the computer.

  "Kenny," the woman at the desk behind them said, "Andy Anderson's

  calling, wants to know if you've seen Jerry Dial in town."

  Kenny went to the phone.

  A Windows 95 desktop popped up on the computer, no password necessary.

  One of the icons was Word for Windows. She clicked on it on the

  assumption that a researcher would use a text and not a graphics file,

  and she was right. Paula had organized her professional life into

  folders containing files. One file was labeled novel and contained seven

  separate files labeled draft I through draft7. Every one of them had a

  different title, as if Paula had been unable to decide between the

  relative merits of "Pointing North," which brought an involuntary grin

  to Kate's face, and "Year
s of Gold," which made her want to gag. She was

  more interested in the folder marked dirt, however. She clicked on it.

  There was one file called heiman and another called Gordaoff.

  "Click on Gordaoff first," Jim said, leaning over her shoulder.

  "Uh-huh." Kate looked around. "Grab me one of those floppies, would

  you?" she said.

  "Why?"

  "Just do it, Chopin."

  He did and she slipped it into the slot on the side of the laptop and

  copied both files.

  Jim sighed. "Why didn't you just ask him if you could?"

  143

  "Because then he might have to say no to me. I don't like making my

  friends uncomfortable."

  "Sure you don't," Jim said beneath his breath, as Kate slipped the

  floppy into a pocket.

  "You aren't my friend," she said before she could stop herself.

  There was another of those tense silences between the two of them that

  seemed to be popping up with uncomfortable regularity. "You got that

  right, if nothing else," Jim said, his voice cool and his words clipped.

  Kenny came back and picked up the expanding file folder that was also

  part of Paula Pawlowski's effects.

  "Anything in there?" Kate said.

  "Notes about Peter Heiman, mostly. About his brother, his dad, his

  grandfather. Mostly history, starting back in Fairbanks right after the

  Klondike. That what she was supposed to be looking up?"

  "I think she was supposed to be finding out anything about Peter Heiman

  that would help Darlene beat him in the election."

  "I thought Anne Gordaoff was running against Pete."

  Kate smiled. "It's her face on the posters," she said, and left it at

  that. "Mind if I take a look?"

  Paula's handwriting was large and sprawling, with a lot of marginal

  notes surrounded by balloons with arrows pointing to other balloons and

  paragraphs. There were a few doodles here and there, asterisks,

  five-pointed stars, a hand-drawn game of Dots the likes of which Kate

  hadn't seen since grade school. "Think I could have copies of what's in

  here?" she asked Kenny.

  "Oh, like the copy you made of the files on the laptop?" Kenny asked.

  Kate refused to blush. "I was thinking more of a Xerox machine for the

  paperwork."

  "You might have asked."

  "But then you might have had to say no."

  144

  ?True." To Jim Chopin's immense and visible disgust, Kenny waved her to

  the copy machine.

  "Thanks, Kenny," she said when she was done.

  "I don't like this, Kate." He stood in the center of the outer office,

  arms folded, his large figure dominating the space and infusing it with

  a sense of purposeful menace. "I get paid to keep a peaceful, prosperous

  community peaceful and prosperous. The community doesn't like it when

  somebody gets killed here, and I don't like it when the community

  doesn't like it."

  "I know."

  "Now there have been two murders."

  "Yes."

  "And I don't have a suspect for either one."

  "I know."

  "I don't like that, either." Kenny spoke with deliberation, giving each

  word its due weight. He wouldn't be deflected and he wouldn't be rushed.

  Kate listened to him with a sober expression. Jim listened in without

  kibitzing, not something he would do for every other one of his brothers

  and sisters in arms. "I want this cleaned up, and quick. Okay, Billy

  Mike and the mayor and anybody who is anybody is telling me to low-key

  this, fine. But a man is dead, murdered. A woman's dead, murdered, and

  she lived here. I didn't know her, but that doesn't matter. She was one

  of mine."

  He raised his eyes to Kate's. "You're working for the campaign,

  Pawlowski was working for the campaign, you've got the best shot at

  figuring this out. Figure it out. Meantime, I'll get on forensics in

  town. She fought. Maybe some of all that blood isn't hers. Call me,

  every day; tell me what's going on."

  "All right."

  He gave her an envelope for the copies. "Thanks."

  "I've got the Cessna." Jim Chopin said, staring into the air over her

  head. "Want a ride?"

  145

  After Gilbert and Sullivan, Anne and company had been scheduled to fly

  out to Niniltna, leaving Kate to follow how she could.

  The best that Kate knew of Jim Chopin was that he was an excellent

  pilot, even of planes he'd never flown before and never would again, as

  witness their brief and, for lack of a better word, exhilarating flight

  together in a Lockheed C-130 the previous July. "I want to check out

  Paula's trailer again." She looked at Kenny for permission. He

  considered, nodded.

  The Airstream was on a lonely stretch of riverbank, no neighbors around

  for two miles in any direction. "We've already gone through it."

  "I know, but I want to look again."

  "Fine. I'd have to change my flight plan anyway."

  Kate left, followed by Mutt, who pasted a wet one on Jim in passing.

  The two men watched them out of sight. She looked sad in repose, Jim

  thought, quieter, less irritable. He didn't like it.

  Kenny looked at Jim and shook his head. "Boy, Chopin, you've got it bad."

  "Shut the fuck up," Jim said.

  146

  What do you drive?" she asked Tony. "A Ford Escort, also known as a

  McCar," he said.

  "Could I borrow it for a couple of hours?"

  "Sure." He pitched her the keys. ?two door, dark blue, should be around

  back of the kitchen."

  "Thanks, Tony. I'll fill her up before I bring her back." At the

  Airstream, Kate ducked beneath the crime-scene tape and opened the door.

  Mutt looked at Kate pleadingly from the cement square that served as the

  trailer's front porch. "God knows you deserve it," Kate said. "Take the

  afternoon off, girl. Go." Mutt gave a joyous bark and in two leaps was

  in the underbrush. A spruce hen exploded upward, squawking indignantly.

  The hydraulic hinge pulled the door shut behind Kate and nudged her the

  rest of the way inside the tiny living room. She set the envelope

  containing the copies of Paula's notes down on the table and took a

  long, slow look around.

  You had to train long and hard to see the rest of the room a body lay

  in. Maybe Kate was out of practice, but she didn't remember the matching

  flowered print of the curtains and the sofa cushions on the two couches

  with the table between them. Poppies, it looked like, on a dense forest

  green background that gave the material the look of tapestry, and almost

  hid the bloodstain from view.